Dance Greig's Pipes 2682

(or “The Cameronian Rant”)

When the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) were disbanded on 14 May, 1968, exactly 279 years after their embodiment, the 1st Battalion ended where it began and as it began, with religious dignity and dedication to the principles of honour and faith.

The 17th century was a time of intense religious fervour, a “killing time”, when the Scottish Presbyterians fought to the death of freedom and worship and conscience against the incursions of Popery and Episcopacy that the English Crown would impose upon them. The most austere and militant of the Presbyterians were known as Covenanters in that they stood for the principles expressed in the National Covenant that was signed at Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh on 28 February, 1638, during the reign of Charles I. With the accession of Charles II, Presbyterianism was outlawed in an attempt to bring all of Scotland to Episcopacy and the Covenanters were forced to hold secret prayer services, often in fields or on the Lowland hillsides, so rigorous was their persecution at the hands of the English and the Moss Troopers of James Graham of Claverhouse, 1st Viscount Dundee, known according to one’s point of view as “Bluidy Clavers” or “Bonny Dundee”. The Covenanters were organised and armed and they fought back valiantly, victorious against Claverhouse at Drumclog on 1 June, 1679, but defeated by a force under James, Duke of Monmouth, three weeks later at Bothwell Brig. In the bitter decade before the accession of the Protestant William of Orange as William II (III), the Covenanters needed a hero and martyr and they got one in Richard Cameron (1648–1680), the so-called “Lion of the Covenant”.

Cameron was born at Falkland in Fife, the son of a merchant, and, after graduating from St. Andrews University, he became a schoolmaster and was for a time chaplain and tutor in the family of Scott of Harden. While he was living in the Netherlands among the Covenanting exiles, he was ordained and in 1680 he returned to Scotland to become a hill-preacher and Covenanting leader. On 22 June, 1680, Cameron with his brother, Michael, Thomas Douglas and Donald Cargill and a score of followers marched in to Sanquhar in Dumfries-shire and affixed a paper to the Mercat Cross. This was the “Declaration of Sanquhar” which disavowed Charles II because he had broken the Covenant which he had sworn to uphold at his coronation. The act was condemned as treason and a price of 5,000 merks (about £834) was put on Cameron’s head. The following month, on 20 July, the Covenanters led by David Hackson of Rathillet and Cameron were engaged by a company of dragoons at Airds Moss, a high moor near Muirkirk in eastern Ayrshire, and in the action Richard Cameron and his brother were killed.

In 1689 William of Orange, with his wife Mary, daughter of James VII (II) succeeded to the throne and the day for which the Covenanters had fought and prayed had come. William, through his Parliament of 1690, decreed that all of Scotland north of the Tweed should adopt Presbyterianism, a move which, while popular with the Covenanters, was not greeted with enthusiasm by Scotland’s other religious factions. Trouble, in the form of the Jacobites, erupted and William had already moved to strengthen his military forces in Scotland.

The 1st Battalion of the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), the old 26th, descended directly from the “Cameronian Guard” of the “killing time”. On 14 May, 1689, the eighteen year old John Douglas, Earl of Angus, eldest son of James, 2nd Marquess of Douglas, raised the regiment at Douglas in Lanarkshire. With no drums beating a frenzy and no levy money offered, 1,200 men, twenty companies, two battalions, chiefly Covenanters, many from the Douglas estates, enlisted in that one day. While officially called the “Earl of Angus’s Regiment”, with the young earl as Colonel-in-Chief and William Cleland, a veteran Covenanter who had fought heroically at Drumclog, as Colonel, the regiment was known as “The Cameronians” in honour of Richard Cameron.

From the very beginning the Cameronians had many distinctions. It was the only regiment, very possibly, to have its roots in a religious cause and to have been named for a religious reformer. Every man was issued a Bible and each company had an elder of the church appointed to it. The Cameronians carried arms on church parade and, in memory of the hill-preachers, sentries were posted during Divine Service. As Scotland’s only Rifle Regiment, they marched at the semi-trot, 140 paces to the minute, and their uniform of dark green jacket with black facings and trews of Douglas tartan emphasised their sober religious background and their loyalty to the Douglas family. The Cameronians never stood to toast the Sovereign, but, instead, seated called down the blessing of God upon their Ruler.

The 1,200 largely untrained recruits were marched to Stirling, the military gateway to the Highlands, and then on to Dunkeld to face 5,000 Highland clansmen under Colonel Alexander Cannon, the Jacobite successor to Claverhouse who had died of wounds received at the battle of Killiecrankie. After a desperate four-hour fight that raged furiously through the litte town, with the Cameronians running short of bullets and powder, with Cleland slain, and placing, perforce, their hope for victory in the hands of God, the Highlanders suddenly retreated into the hills from which they had leaped to the attack. The Jacobite cause was cooled for nearly twenty-five years and the Cameronians had won their first victory for God, King and Country.

For the Cameronians there then came long periods of overseas duty with only a brief return to Scotland in 1715 to fight, and win, against the Jacobites at the battle of Preston. In 1692 they were in the Low Countries, at Steenkirk, where the young Earl of Angus was killed. They served under the Duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession and earned four of their battle honours. During the Seven Years War the Cameronians were sent to the West Indies and they fought in North America in the American war of Independence. They campaigned against Napoleon in Egypt and Spain. They later served in India and China and won yet another battle honour in Abyssinia.

In 1881 the 26th Cameronian Regiment was amalgamated with the 90th Perthshire Volunteers, “The Perthshire Grey Breeks”, raised in 1794 by Thomas Graham of Balgowan, General Lord Lynedoch. From then until their disbandment in 1968, the two battalions were known as the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) (26 and 90) and as such they fought in the South African War, World Wars I and II and in the Mid-East.

The 1st Battalion, the Cameronians , suffered few defaults and many victories, but the most difficult ofrder that they ever had to obey was that for disbanding the regiment. The ceremony, reminiscent of the full-dress Conventicles held each year by the Cameronians, was a religious one with Psalms, hymns, prayers, Lessons and sentries posted. The end came with the words of the Battalion commanding officer, to the General Officer Commanding, Scotland, “We have to go now, sir. It is time for us to go” and the playing of “The Flowers of the Forest” by the Pipe-Major. Thus it was that a great regiment died on Douglas Moor.